DOS emulator iDOS arrived on the App Store last year and was swiftly removed once it became clear the author had ill-advisedly bundled commercial games with it that he didn’t have the rights to. Apple was also apparently pissed that iTunes file sharing enabled you to upload your own games to the app. This, apparently, is bad and totally different from, say:

• File-sharing books to iBooks, GoodReader, Stanza and the like;
• File-sharing comics to Comic Zeal;
• File-sharing documents you’ve written to Pages;
• File-sharing practically anything to Air Sharing.

So in iDOS 2, the author removed file-sharing, resubmitted and the app found its way back to the store. The author reports it’s been pulled again, “because the ability to run custom executable is violating the appstore [sic] policy”.

These ‘custom executables’ (i.e. third-party games) can only be installed by using a third-party utility to access app bundles. Applications like iPhone Explorer and PhoneView enable users of non-jailbroken devices to mount an application bundle and access its /Documents and /Library folders. In iDOS, you could shove old DOS games in there, then fire up the command line on the app itself and load the games. Apple considers this evil, even if you, say, own the rights to the games, or they are freeware and you therefore legally have the right to run them.

My worry is that Apple will now close the backdoor to app bundles, somehow blocking access to the aforementioned folders. Few people know they exist and that you can access them, but they are massively handy, because backing up these folders is the ONLY way you can back-up content from apps and games before deleting them, and the ONLY way you can reinstate your data after a reinstall. I’ve done this myself many dozens of times—it’s the only way I can have a usable device but also not ‘lose’ the many hours I put into the likes of GTA.

Apple clearly doesn’t care about this. When you wipe an app, the data’s gone for good. This is absurdly stupid, putting iOS games on a par with cheap, nasty DS carts that don’t have battery back-ups. If Apple automatically backed up game and app states to iTunes and provided the option for reinstating this data on a reinstall, blocking backdoors would be fine, but it doesn’t. Here’s hoping I’m wrong, but knowing Apple, it favours locking down wherever possible, even if there’s really little or no reason to.

In January, I remarked on IceFish’s amazing line of side-scrolling Metal Slug rip-offs, which weren’t at all basically the same game trying to spam the App Store.

There was Commando:

And the amazing, innovative Commando Soldier:

And then the truly ground-breaking Action Commando:

But it appears I wasn’t thorough enough in my exploration of the App Store, because I missed iCmdo, for which I can only apologise. That creative and novel game looks like this:

But what if, even after iCmdo, you’ve not had your fill of exciting, unique, cutting-edge iOS games? Why, you’re in luck, because IceFish has created two more pioneering titles that are unlike anything you’ve ever seen on the App Store before.

First up, there’s the distinctive CommandoCityRescue:

But Craig, I hear you say, I don’t like games with ‘City’ in the title, so what can I do? WHAT IS THERE FOR ME HERE? Don’t be disheartened, because IceFish has created a game just for you, and it’s called CommandoRescue:

I’m sure you’ll join me in congratulating IceFish for creating what must be the most diverse and imaginative selection of games on the App Store. EA, your time is done—there’s a new champ in town!

Phil Libin’s guest post on TechCrunch is an eye-opener. The day the Mac App Store launched, the Mac leapt from bringing in about three per cent of new Evernote users to 52 per cent, and although this figure slid over the following days, it’s still high.

Libin thinks this proves desktop software remains viable, but that user experience is key, as is discoverability. One thing Apple got very right with iOS was in placing the App Store front and centre and encouraging users to buy software. The same’s now true on the Mac. One can only hope someone at Microsoft is paying attention, because a Windows equivalent would be fantastic (and potentially cut down on malware/virus issues if the store was properly curated).

Libin also reckons the experience has cemented his thoughts regarding users gravitating towards the best user experiences, justifying the company’s native-apps approach:

If Evernote’s desktop clients were written in Adobe AIR, I’d be worried right now. The immediate popularity of the Mac App Store, and the iPhone App Store before it, reinforces my belief that in a world of infinite software choice, people gravitate towards the products with the best overall user experience. It’s very hard for something developed in a cross-platform, lowest-common-denominator technology to provide as nice an experience as a similar native app.

As the CEO of a software company, I wish this weren’t true. I’d love to build one version of our App that could work everywhere. Instead, we develop separate native versions for Windows, Mac, Desktop Web, iOS, Android, BlackBerry, HP WebOS and (coming soon) Windows Phone 7. We do it because the results are better and, frankly, that’s all-important. We could probably save 70% of our development budget by switching to a single, cross-platform client, but we would probably lose 80% of our users. And we’d be shut out of most app stores and go back to worrying about distribution.

It’s something of a running joke in the tech press how often highly paid and influential analysts update their predictions for iPad sales. TechCrunch’s article by Erick Schonfeld from a couple of days back neatly sums things up:

The iPad sold three times as much as the average tech blogger predictions, and five times as much as the average Wall Street analyst prediction. Think about that the next time you see a prediction for anything in tech. The newer it is, the less anybody knows.

To be fair, Brian Marshall did OK guessing at seven million, but just 1.1 million, Doug Reid of Thomas Weisel and Yair Reiner of Oppenheimer? Really? Even if the iPad hadn’t become a breakout hit and shaken up the industry, it would have sold more than that number to Apple fans alone.

A year ago: Acer dismisses a tablet (PCWorld), arguing that its netbooks and notebooks won’t be affected by the iPad.

Today: Acer is to start selling tablets by summer (Computerworld), and Taiwan sales manager Lu Bing-hsian says:

They are aimed at phasing out netbooks. That’s the direction of the market.